Is the air on the plane safe?

Airlines are trying to convince passengers that the air on the plane is extremely safe, amid the aviation industry seeking to recover from the Covid-19 pandemic.

They have to fight the notion that in an airplane cabin there is only static air or filtered again and again. The truth is not so.

In an office building, the atmosphere is basically changed about 4 times per hour. On a modern aircraft, this number can be up to 20 - 30 times. In most cases, compressed air is brought from the clean part of the engine to air-conditioning packages.

From there the air flows to the fans on the ceiling of the cabin, where it is blown down vertically, not horizontally. Half of the air will be recycled through filters, designed to remove 99.97% of the harmful substances. The other half is pushed out of the plane through air valves.

The aircraft manufacturers say the onboard air is refreshed every 2 to 3 minutes.

Scientists are more cautious, saying that the air on the plane is always a new - old mixture and it is difficult to predict the air currents in short distances.

Boeing and Airbus have deployed many engineers to study the airflow between seats on the aircraft to better understand how to reduce the risk of infection on flights.